


Have you tried baking

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [20]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Baking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, young mchanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 23:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: In which Jesse freaks out and tries his hand at drunk baking.





	Have you tried baking

Jesse felt like something was off from the moment he woke up on their last morning together and, upon reaching out for him, found that Hanzo wasn’t in bed next to him. He blinked and squinted over at the alarm clock, finding that it wasn’t even seven. He had no memory, however hazy, of anyone kissing his shoulder on their way up. The last four weeks had trained him to expect waking with the warm weight of an arm resting over his chest, and he’d thought that at least _today_ – oh well, he’d probably just gotten up to go to the bathroom or something. Jesse lay back down and pulled the covers up to his chin, closing his eyes and waiting for him to come back.

There was the sound of keys clinking from somewhere outside the bedroom door; Jesse slid his eyes back open and listened until he heard it again, then jumped out of bed and barged into the living room. Hanzo stood in the hallway, fully dressed and in the middle of shrugging on his coat. There was a strangeness about the set of his shoulders, a stiff and unapproachable edge Jesse hadn’t seen in person for years.

Something in Jesse’s chest coiled in on itself like an armadillo in the presence of an alligator.

Jesse leaned against the doorframe, desperately feigning nonchalance. “Uh. Hey.”

Hanzo spared barely a glance for Jesse standing there in his underwear. “Oh. Good morning. I thought you were still asleep.”

“Kinda was. You... goin’ out?”

“What?” Hanzo looked at him like he was looking through him, the wrinkle in his forehead not easing. “Yes, for a while. Something - hm. Came up.”

 _But you’re leaving in less than fifteen hours_ , Jesse thought stupidly. _I thought we…_

Hanzo did up the buttons of the coat with his strong, unfailing fingers. Jesse didn’t know what he’d thought, exactly.

Jesse scratched the back of his neck and folded his arms tightly over his chest, wishing he’d thought to put on a t-shirt. “I mean... gimme a second to get decent and I’ll come with you?”

With a shake of his head Hanzo said: “That is not necessary.”

”Right.”

Hanzo got his phone and slid it into a pocket, glanced around with sharp eyes as if to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and turned towards the door.

”Get some more sleep. I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Sure.”

Hanzo gave a distracted smile over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him, and in the silence afterwards it was enough to make Jesse feel like someone had left a fish hook in his heart and were tugging the line.

When he finally managed to shake himself out of that Jesse got dressed, went into the kitchen, realized his appetite had taken off for parts unknown and wandered back into the living room. For a while he tried to settle down on the couch, but found that he couldn’t for the life of him get comfortable. By the time he’d wormed himself into a twisted upside-down pose normally only found in more extreme forms of yoga for the second time he gave up on that and braved the kitchen again to no avail.

The house was a sweet little bungalow Hanzo had produced like a rabbit from whatever hat he kept covert real estate in, light and airy and full of green plants neither of them knew anything about but were slowly figuring out how often to water, after the first few casualties were respectfully interred in the back garden. Jesse stood there, barefoot on the hardwood floor, and tried to think about nothing in particular – a challenge, given that they’d had sex on or against pretty much every flat surface in the house at this point and every time he glanced at the couch he flashed back to the flush washing pink and sweet over Hanzo’s chest in the wake of Jesse’s lips.

Jesse went out to the porch. He rolled himself a cigarette. He watched the lazy coils of smoke rise to meet an equally gray and listless sky.

He felt like one sloppy lump of static electricity, like if you rubbed him against a balloon he’d be the one you could stick to the ceiling afterwards.

Somewhere around the fourth cigarette he went back in and got the bourbon. Thinking got a bit easier after that, or at least the sharpest edges were dulled. He rolled the neck of the bottle between his fingers, the glass chill and smooth against his skin. C’mon. There had to be things that made him feel better that didn’t end in a hangover. So. Okay. Soothing things. Hanzo, but of course that was rather beside the point right now. Landing a tricky shot, which - well, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where the odd gunshot would be written off as one of those things that just happened sometimes and bullet holes wouldn’t improve the lampshades. Riding; highly unlikely given the suburban circumstances. Old movies, but he couldn’t fucking concentrate for long enough to even put one on. And then there were… other things. Of course there had to be other things.

He went back inside and paced back and forth, still smoking and with every window wide open to feel like there was enough air in the house. Something good but uncomplicated, like a horse bumping your hand with its nose or the smell of rain or – freshly baked cookies, maybe.

Huh. Cookies. He stopped in his tracks, considering.

His mom would make them, he was pretty sure. At least there seemed to be a baking kind of smell around some of the rusty anchors in his memory where he was almost certain she should be. He tried to call up an echo of something, a glimpse of... an apron. Laughter and chocolate and a kitchen window with cheerful curtains and a red apron. A big calloused hand running through his hair? Who knew, really. Could be true, could be things he’d puzzled together from observation and wishful thinking. Mrs Sanchez hadn’t been big on cooking of any kind, but she’d said her wife had loved baking, before the war – maybe that was where he’d taken it from. If there _were_ , somewhere in the murky depths of his recollection, inherited recipes, some kind of innate cookie know-how...

In the end he looked up _‘brownies recipe easy’_ online.

Once he’d raided the kitchen and found that they had most of the ingredients – well, a bit short on normal flour so he had to make up the difference with what he was pretty sure was some whole wheat stuff – he lined them all up on the countertop and got the biggest bowl he could find before jumping in.

Jesse leaned his forehead against the cabinet door as he stirred melting butter around. It was almost funny, really. He’d been utterly defeated by this single traitorous concept he could no longer keep at arm’s length - _It’s not enough. I need... I want more. Don’t go tomorrow._

He bit his lip, hard enough that there was a real sting in it. It sounded even stupider like that, barefaced and out in the open. Of all the silly, needy things to... As if this wasn’t risky enough to begin with, as if he shouldn’t thank his lucky stars he got to have any of it at all, as if they didn’t talk all the time, just not face to face, just not so he got to touch him.

He consulted the recipe and scanned the shelves for vanilla extract, which he admittedly would likely not have known if he saw it and couldn’t be that important either if you needed less than a teaspoon. The labels were all in languages he couldn’t read - he sniffed through the various containers until he recognized something vaguely vanilla-ish and dumped some of it in.

It was an ugly thought, the kind you could pretend to ignore like the ache of an old bullet wound of the soul until it came back to haunt you with full phantom pain force at four a.m. Because as well as they worked together and as gentle as Hanzo’s hands were and as much as Jesse knew… he knew he wasn’t nothing: not even his inexhaustible reservoirs of self loathing could completely drown out the way Hanzo looked at him sometimes.

But at the end of the day Hanzo didn’t _need_ him.

Jesse cracked a couple of eggs, realized halfway through the fifth one that the recipe only called for four, and missed the bowl so that the yolk slowly ran down the side of a kitchen cabinet door. After some exerted thought he decided that it would be quite some time until it dripped onto the floor and that in any case that was a problem for Future Jesse, who’d presumably know how to deal with it. Current Jesse took another drink from the bourbon and measured out some sugar.

Hanzo didn’t need him, and Jesse knew better than to push his luck. He had no secret aces up his sleeve with this. He brought nothing to the table that couldn’t easily be found somewhere else if he became more trouble than he was worth - and, well, generally he already was. Hanzo was smart. It could only be a question of time before he figured that one out. And at the end of the day he was a Shimada before he was Hanzo - always had been, always would be. He’d been theirs long before he was Jesse’s, and he had no illusions that he’d ever be able to change that, or that he had the right to. It was the loadbearing structure of him; take it away and the rest would collapse. Jesse never wanted to see that, never mind cause it, no matter how shitty it was to watch him make himself distant and expressionless before going back to them.

(If Jesse occasionally felt an overpowering need to set everything on fire and take Hanzo somewhere safe and far away where they’d never find him, well. He’d learned a long time ago that you can’t always get what you want.)

Lost in thought he poured a generous amount of booze into what turned out to be not a glass but the baking bowl.

”Damn.”

He peered down into the batter. That was definitely... runnier than it ought to be now.

Uh. Well. You soaked cakes in rum sometimes, right? When you were doing the fancy kind of baking? Or, like... put baileys in, which was basically whiskey anyway. He could totally spin this from ’utter and harrowingly symbolic failure’ into ’creative and daring’; it was practically his trademark. He added another clunk for good measure and heaped in extra sugar and flour to make up for it. No, shit, that was powdered sugar, not flour. There. A bit more of both. No one would even notice, probably.

It wasn’t as though he was about to propose marriage or anything - Jesse was pretty sure he wasn’t son in law material, for one - and he hadn’t been concussed nearly enough times to think that getting excess attention from the Shimada clan was anything but a fine way to subsidize the undertaker business, more often than not. But...

But Jesse spent most of his time these days fighting the impulse to reach for someone who wouldn’t be there, like his body knew where it was supposed to be even if there were oceans and continents in the way. It was, presumably, what people meant by homesickness; he’d never really been in a position to know before.

In hindsight the pan he’d picked might be a little too big - the layer of batter seemed kind of thin, stretched out like that. Or maybe it was just his depth perception getting wonky, this deep in the bottle. He poked experimentally with a fork to gauge the thickness. Eh, it would do. He shoved the whole shebang into the oven and closed the door, then stood there for a while without knowing what to do with his newly idle hands.

He returned to the living room and distractedly started rolling another cigarette as he looked around, at the small but monumental landmarks showing they’d stayed there together for a while now – the one-step-up-from-cardboard guitar Jesse had bought on a trip into town the first week leaned up against the couch next to a scabbard – simple but exquisitely crafted; Hanzo might have made it himself, actually, it seemed like the kind of weird shit the Shimadas thought of as perfectly sensible bildungsroman stuff. An implausible amount of bladed weaponry Jesse didn’t know the names for and wouldn’t be able to pronounce if he did and which Hanzo had somehow managed to get past airport security several times now. (No, really, _how?_ Jesse was no slouch himself, but there was ’concealed weaponry’ and then there was ’half an armory nonchalantly tucked up your sleeve’.)

Their holovids lay side by side on the table, Jesse’s a few models behind and looking like it had survived being repeatedly run over by a truck and Hanzo’s sleek and spotless like it’d come off the production line five minutes ago even though Jesse knew for a fact he’d had it for years. Next to them there was a silk ribbon draped carelessly over Jesse’s hat – he picked up the ribbon and spent some time running his fingers over the fabric before rolling it together as neatly as he knew how and putting it back on its own.

Once or twice he’d let himself imagine it, what it would be like to have this for real. He usually tried to tell himself he’d get bored of it. He could spend whole afternoons thinking about it, just to convince himself it would get old real fast. He had perfected the mental image of the face Hanzo would make upon finding a - non-negotiable - Johnny Cash poster on their living room wall, filling in the minute detailing of pained incredulity like a painter with an obscenely small brush and too much spare time. It didn’t even have to be a place, exactly; as long as he could find Hanzo at the end of the day and make him laugh and fall asleep with his face tucked against his neck he’d be the happiest man on Earth. He didn’t need to belong anywhere else.

...Jesse was a fucking disgrace to humanity most days. He recognized that.

He stood lost in thought until he felt his nostrils flare and realized there was a sharp smell in the air. Huh. Smelled like something... burning. He glanced down at the cigarette in his hand, realized he hadn’t actually lit it, briefly pondered the implications of that and then stormed to the kitchen, where gently chocolate-scented smoke was gathering under the ceiling.

”Shit,” he hissed, turning off the oven and frantically using the kitchen towel to wave away the worst of the smoke, ”shit shit fuck – ”

Once he was sure nothing was actively on fire he took a moment to get his breath back. Then he went about cutting the cake. The bread knife seemed peculiarly slippery as he did his best to carve the thing into regular squares, but he persevered until he could stand back and take in his work. The result was hardly symmetrical, or particularly pretty, _or_ immediately appetizing, but on the other hand... only one half was what you could, if you were feeling uncharitable, describe as _lightly_ burned. You probably wouldn’t mistake it for peat at second glance – that was a thing you had to give it.

Well.

He put the knife away and sank down with his back against the cabinet door until he sat slumped against it, head tilted to stare at the ceiling, and thought for a while about the fact that shooting people in the head seemed to be all he could figure out how to do well. It was the sort of fifteen minutes he’d hoped the bourbon would keep at bay.

...he squeezed his eyes shut against a shiver of sense memory from last night, fingers brushing through his hair, feeling fucked out and undone and suffused through with happiness down to his bones. They’d talked about... Jesse didn’t even know; that was the point, the kind of talking you did without thinking, no need to count the cards.

Hanzo had asked about the nearly-faded scar on his arm and because it had been Hanzo asking Jesse had told him, about Mrs Sanchez who’d taken him in at thirteen after she found him with a broken arm and a fever in her back garden, about how he still remembered the name of every horse in her stables, about how he’d left one night while she waited for him to finish up working and come in for dinner because it was a good place and he didn’t want to take the chance that someone might track him down there and hurt it. About how it had been a relief because at least he could stop holding his breath waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He’d never meant to tell anyone about that.

It all felt so dumb now, pathetically feeble when exposed to the harshness of daylight. He ground the heels of his hand against his closed eyes. Of course that would put him off. _When_ would he learn to keep his head down and his mouth fucking shut? Nobody ever actually wanted to know the truth, that shit just got you in trouble one way or another.

The truth was that he wanted time he didn’t have to steal. The truth was that he wanted to tell Hanzo everything.

Jesse didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there like that when the lock turned and the door swung open, but it made him jump so much that he almost spilled the remaining bourbon into his lap. He scrambled to steady the bottle and sat completely still, listening while the door closed. It was quiet for a few heartbeats, then Hanzo made a bewildered sound.

”Jesse?”

For a split second Jesse pondered the benefits of staying hidden or even, conceivably, playing dead, just for long enough to get out of this without having to talk.

”Down here,” he called, raising a half-hearted hand to wave over the edge of the kitchen counter.

Hanzo stepped over the floor until he spotted Jesse and the floury catastrophe that was the kitchen. His face wound itself up for annoyance, but then he saw Jesse’s expression and simply ended up at confused, maybe a bit worried – he took off the coat and hung it by the door, then stood there with his head tilted to the side for a while as if that would help him make more sense of the situation. “...what happened here?”

“...nothin’,” said Jesse, who was closing in on dead drunk at half past noon and had left the kitchen a smoking ruin around him. Egg yolk slowly trickled down the cabinet door next to him.

“There is no call to insult my intelligence,” Hanzo said dryly, bending down to take the bottle from Jesse’s unprotesting hands and raising an eyebrow as he noticed how light it was before putting it down on the counter. His gaze shifted over to the pan of brownies. ”You made these?”

Jesse nodded sheepishly, like some Colonel Mustard caught red-handed in the library with a candlestick realizing ’it’s not what it looks like’ wouldn’t cut it.

”Huh.” Hanzo picked up a brownie with the very tips of his fingers and inspected it like he had discovered a fascinating, not _entirely_ repulsive kind of cockroach. When he took a bite it made a dry crack that, Jesse had to admit, did not indicate the sort of consistency the recipe had been going for. Hanzo chewed thoughtfully.

“These are truly disgusting,” he commented eventually, an observation free of malice but containing a sort of serene wonder.

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed miserably.

“Is it an American thing, or…”

“Nah,” Jesse said. “Nah, just me.”

“Hm.” Hanzo held onto the brownie as he used a dish cloth to wipe away the egg from the cabinet door before sitting down next to Jesse, close enough that their thighs pressed together. He absently brushed the side of his foot against Jesse’s as he settled. ”Well, they are several orders too sweet and reek of liquor; perhaps I should bring some home with me. Genji would love them.”

Jesse made a sound that, on a different day, might have been a laugh and, today, came out as a sad bleat. Hanzo glanced at him out of the corner of his eye but didn’t offer a remark.

There was a long spell of quiet during which Jesse’s poor addled brain tried to flounder through this whirlpool of its own making to get on top of, well. Anything. Hanzo said nothing and Jesse just sat there, frozen between wanting him to ask and wishing to god he wouldn’t - he felt intensely aware of the warmth of him and the quiet steady strength of his shoulder where it rested against Jesse’s, of the unforgiving contrast between how much he wanted to take his hand and how patently impossible the motion seemed.

Finally Hanzo cleared his throat. “I made some arrangements this morning, and…” He trailed off, nibbled a bit on the brownie as if buying time, or building up courage before a jump - his mind must be on something else, he didn’t even make a face at the taste. Now that Jesse actually looked at him he realized that the expression held something similar to the wooden nervousness he’d mistaken for superciliousness the first few times they’d met. “I managed to get another week. Here. If you would like – I did not intend to presume, but the window of opportunity seemed small enough that I thought I should just... If you have other plans, that of course takes precedence, but I wanted – hm. ”

He broke himself off like he’d forcibly had to wrench back control of his mouth and took another bite of brownie, as if for his sins. After a while he said: “...Jesse?”

“’S nothin’,” Jesse managed. “Just something in my eye. I’m sorry.”

Hanzo blinked at him, then wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him in, hugging him tightly. “I seem to have missed something crucial in the middle here.”

Jesse laughed sloppily, burrowing his face into Hanzo’s shoulder. He felt Hanzo lean to put the brownie safely away on the countertop and unceremoniously wipe his fingers on his pants before cupping the back of Jesse’s head in his hand.

”That’d be good,” Jesse puzzled together from the tangles in his head. ”Another week’d be good.”

”...hm.”

Without thinking Jesse kissed him, gracelessly, more an expression of the need to be close than a coordinated gesture - he felt Hanzo give a huff of laughter against his cheek as he touched Jesse’s jaw and guided his face to an easier angle. Jesse’s fingers fumbled until they found the front of Hanzo’s shirt and could tangle in the light fabric.

Hanzo paused and searched his face, hand still curled over Jesse’s cheek.

“Did I… what happened to make you…”

Jesse shook his head and kissed him again to ease away the way his eyebrows were scrunched together. It was about as eloquent as he was going to get. Words, as well as several levels of fine motor skills, were beyond him in that moment.

Thankfully Hanzo seemed willing to go with it, taking Jesse’s face in careful palms and kissing him back - he tasted mostly like charred chocolate and only a little like booze, which probably beat Jesse, who must be closing in on becoming his own class of intoxicant at this point. He made a small sound against Hanzo’s mouth and reached out to feel the softness of his hair, twining it between his fingers.

When he pulled back he kept his eyes closed, not sure he was ready for being looked at, but when he found the courage to open them there was just Hanzo, familiar and perfect if still puzzled.

”Hey,” Jesse said, bumping their noses together, his cheeks happily on fire. Hanzo quirked a smile back and brushed Jesse’s forehead with dry lips.

”Hello there.”

Jesse took Hanzo’s hand from his cheek and played with it a little, mapping out the palm with his thumb.

”Your hands’re so good,” he muttered, kissing the back of it and then each of his fingers in turn.

”I – what?”

”’S true,” Jesse insisted. It seemed important that he knew. ”All... precise and safe and strong and calloused and shit.”

Hanzo snorted. ”You really did have a lot to drink. What happened?” he asked again, smoothing Jesse’s hair away from his face.

”That’s - ” Jesse gave it up as a bad job and rested his head against Hanzo’s shoulder. ”It doesn’t matter.”

Hanzo shifted him to where he could more easily put his arms around him and hold him up. ”If it nearly caused you to burn down the house,” he said, ”I humbly disagree.”

”...guess I missed you.”

Hanzo made a very careful sound, like the leader of an expeditionary force realizing he was setting foot on thin ice but forging ahead anyway in search of answers. ”I... was gone for less than five hours.”

”Not now, exactly. Just – in general. All the time.”

”Oh.”

Jesse grimaced into Hanzo’s shoulder. ”Yeah.”

There was a touch to the nape of his neck, Hanzo’s fingers light and warm.

”I...” Hanzo cradled Jesse’s head against his chest, thumb slowly circling over the skin behind Jesse’s ear, ”miss you too. All the time. As well. When you leave.”

Jesse felt his next breath like it was the first real one he’d taken all day.

”Which was why I went out today. Had I known you would resort to baked goods,” Hanzo added, ”I would have woken you up and explained first, but time was of the essence and you looked so – I could not – hm. You were sleeping.”

”At least leave a note on the nightstand or somethin’ next time so I won’t have to panic about getting you back from rival ninjas when I can’t find you,” Jesse mumbled blearily, tucking his fingers under the collar of Hanzo’s shirt to rest the backs of them against his skin.

Hanzo snorted. ”That was what you were worried about?”

Sensing the opportunity to be simultaneously mildly misdirecting and entirely truthful Jesse slurred: ”It would astound you how many unlikely things I can worry about at once under this cool ’n steely exterior.”

That earned him a chuckle - Jesse closed his eyes and rested his temple against Hanzo’s collar bone, the sound echoing through every chamber of his heart, his chest reverberating with it.

A fucking embarrassment of a _disgrace_. He could live with that.

”Are you falling asleep on me?” Hanzo asked after a while, sounding amused as he rubbed the back of Jesse’s neck.

”I’d never,” mumbled Jesse. Now that his nerves had settled down from their frantic screaming whine he felt it, the familiar texture of exhaustion in the wake of adrenaline but gentler, somehow, no lead weighing down his blood, just the strange restfulness of listening to Hanzo’s heartbeat. He _would_ doze off here given half a chance, though.

”Let us relocate somewhere more comfortable nevertheless. In the unlikely case.”

”’Kay.”

Hanzo gave him another squeeze before getting to his feet.

“You,” he said, holding out a hand for Jesse, “should drink a lot of water.”

“Uh-huh,” Jesse agreed. Once he got up he had to lean on Hanzo for a few moments before the world stopped swaying quite so precariously, which wasn’t so bad because Hanzo was warm and solid and smelled like soft summer mornings. He buried his face in the curve of Hanzo’s neck and sighed happily. ”...y’re so _sturdy_.”

Hanzo shook his head at him and herded him to the couch, manhandling him until he was in a position where he probably wouldn’t fall down. Then he picked up the quilt – an honest-to-god, not-even-disconcertingly-stained quilt, something Jesse had never seen in his life before meeting him – and lobbed it at Jesse’s chest before heading back to the kitchen. ”Here.”

While Jesse tried to figure out what corner of the quilt he was holding at any given moment – an ordeal in itself when concepts like ’up’ and ’down’ already felt somewhat negotiable – he heard Hanzo moving around in the kitchen, the sink running, glass clinking. After a few minutes he emerged with a pitcher of water, an already-filled glass of green-tinted fluid and a plate of something Jesse couldn’t make out from his pathetic prone position, all of which he set down on the table.

”...help,” Jesse said, giving up on the quilt and flopping uselessly back down with it over his face. Hanzo gave a snicker that Jesse would at least have pretended to take offense at if he hadn’t gone on to ruffle his hair and unfolded the quilt properly, dropping it neatly over Jesse’s lap before handing him the glass.

”What’s in this?” Jesse asked, giving the liquid a swirl. It seemed too sticky to be water.

”Just drink it,” Hanzo drawled, folding his arms. ”Trust me, you will thank me later.”

Jesse took a sip and almost spit it back out. He wrinkled his nose. ”Where the hell did you get this? Tastes like rotten seaweed juice.”

”Ancient wisdom passed down for generations. By which I mean the time Genji heard the words ’hangover cure’ and paid attention to modern medical science for a whole week. Perhaps our father is right about his untapped potential,” he added sardonically. ”Imagine if he applied himself as diligently to... oh, anything else.”

”And it works?” Jesse asked skeptically.

”Would I put up with the taste if it did not?”

Jesse gave a ’good point’ grunt and steeled himself before knocking the rest of it back. He coughed. ”Yikes. Kill or cure, I guess.”

”Indeed. Bucket?”

Jesse shook his head and gave the glass back.

”Are you sure?”

”Ain’t my first rodeo, Mr Shimada. I’ve got a _feel_ for these things.”

Hanzo snorted and muttered something under his breath, nudging Jesse with his thigh until he made enough room on the couch. After filling the glass with water this time and making him drink that as well he settled Jesse’s head in his lap, leaning to get his holovid from the table.

”I put my faith in your expertise,” Hanzo said, one hand absently stroking through Jesse’s hair while he activated the holovid with the other. He picked up something from the plate and took a distracted bite as he entered the password and scrolled through some menus. ”What was that film you mentioned we should – why are you looking at me like that?”

Jesse sat up to stare at him – or rather at what he was holding, because he’d gotten a good look at it now but still had trouble believing it. ”...what’s that?”

They both glanced at the thing in Hanzo’s hand which was, despite Jesse’s initial disbelief, indeed a rough-hewn slab of brownie. The man was actually, willingly, eating one of Jesse’s disaster cookies.

”Well?” Hanzo said, a smidge defensively. ”You went to all that effort; I might as well finish one.”

”I love you so much,” Jesse blurted, booze-honest and dazed enough that he barely realized it was the first time he’d said it out loud. He’d kept it locked up in his head out of some strange paranoia that letting it out into the light would somehow jinx it, like whatever celestial clerical slip-up had let him have this would be discovered and corrected if he brought any attention to it.

It felt more like a prayer than anything he’d ever said, though.

Hanzo blinked in surprise, then laughed a little as he brushed Jesse’s hair out of his forehead. ”I love you too, Jesse. As I hope was previously established.”

Jesse reached out and ran his thumb over Hanzo’s eyebrow, entranced by how his face softened into openness. He placed a light, deliberate kiss to the corner of his mouth, then again, wishing he knew how to tell him that ever since the first time he’d seen that look it’d been all he wanted to make him smile like that every day for the rest of his life.

”I’ve got so many things I need to tell you,” Jesse said. ”Only I... don’t know how to say any of ’em.”

”Sssh,” Hanzo said, pulling him back down against him. ”There is no rush. We have all the time in the world.”

_Do we?_

He trailed kisses up the line of Hanzo’s neck, nosing at the beginning stubble at the hinge of his jaw. ”Just... make sure to hold me to it, would you?”

Hanzo gave the kind of sound you normally make watching small children and kittens stumble over their own feet and wrapped his arm across Jesse’s shoulders. ”I will. Have a cookie,” he added, pressing one into Jesse’s hand. ”I refuse to suffer alone.”

Jesse grinned against his throat. ”Fair.” He sat back and chewed blearily. ”Jesus. They’re so bad.”

”They are,” Hanzo agreed, with more kindness than Jesse probably deserved, and took another one. ”Should I start the film?”

Jesse found Hanzo’s free hand with his own. ”Sure. Let’s go.”

As the familiar music swelled Jesse drifted off periodically, lulled by the warmth of Hanzo’s body. If he hadn’t known the plot by heart already he’d be real confused every time he nodded awake to a Mexican standoff. He grunted and burrowed his face into Hanzo’s shirt, dozing some more.

”I wish I could thank her for finding you,” Hanzo said at some point, so quiet he might not have meant for it to be heard.

 _I left her,_ Jesse wanted to say. _I got scared and I left and I never even told her why._

He huddled closer to him, listening to his slow, even breathing and not letting go of his hand. “I hope… I hope her daughter came back or somethin’. She was getting pretty old and her wife and the other kid died in the war and the two of them fought all the time afterwards so her daughter left. She didn’t want me to know but she used to drink too much. Maybe it was because of that. Sometimes it was like… it was a good place but it was like the whole house was grieving with her.”

Hanzo rocked him slightly, face turned into his hair. Jesse felt strangely at home in his body even with the slight seasickness of the booze, like the points of contact between them were keeping his soul in place. He turned his face so their cheeks touched.

“I dunno how to - uh. I never put it into words before.”

“Tomorrow, then. Or the day after that. Whenever you want. I will still be here.”

Jesse squeezed his hand, trying to ignore the choked up feeling in his throat. He was a mellow drunk, was all.  “Okay. Deal.” Realizing the credits were rolling and exactly what the impatient gnawing in his stomach was trying to tell him, he added: “I’m gettin’ kinda hungry.”

“I could eat. Maybe we should get something delivered, though, I am not sure I dare let you back into the kitchen.”

“Heresy,” Jesse said. “You love my chili.”

“I do, but then you have never set fire to anything making that.”

“That you know of.”

“No culinary arson that I know of,” Hanzo conceded affectionately. He got his phone from the table and put it down next to him, then pulled Jesse in closer and kissed his shoulder. “You smell like a brewery.”  

“That’s just my daring choice of aftershave.”

Hanzo laughed and slid his hand under Jesse’s t-shirt to rest on his chest. Jesse let his head fall back against his shoulder, smiling beatifically at the ceiling. Neither of them made to move for a while.

“You gonna call the takeout place?”

“Soon,” Hanzo said, nuzzling at the back of his neck. Jesse smiled and twined their fingers together - he was starting to feel dangerously sleepy again.

“First thing I’m doing when I wake up is throwing away the brownies,” he muttered, eyes slipping shut.

“Oh thank god,” Hanzo said.    

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you ever find yourself emotionally overwhelmed first thing in the morning, the solution is probably not to drink yourself into a stupor before breakfast. Just in case anyone has the same coping impulses as Jesse McCree. (I took the ‘bourbon as aftershave’ joke from a Michael Chu tweet, if I remember correctly, and I find it endearing because one loves one’s children unconditionally no matter what kind of wandering catastrophe they are.)  
> Also I swear that the ’holovid’ thing is going to be the bane of my existence. Is it more of a software thing? Is it the actual physical gadget and has it replaced phones and laptops? Why are there present day-looking tablets strewn over all the maps, in that case? Do we call it a ’holovid’, a ’holovid projector’, or something else entirely? It’s been over a year now and I just don’t know. Why will you not grant us answers, Blizzard.
> 
> ETA: Oh and in case anyone is interested, I'm at tumblr at http://vaguely-concerned.tumblr.com! I mostly reblog McHanzo and post idle thoughts/headcanons at 2 AM ha ha.


End file.
